I’ve been participating in the Infinite Summer project since it began back in June. The project brought together tons of people around the world to read Infinite Jest throughout the summer and then more recently read Dracula during the month of October.

I’ve been hosting bi-weekly Seattle area meetups throughout the online reading projects and have been enjoying the swirl of blogging and forums that have occurred as a byproduct of smart people converging on reading the same thing at the same time. It’s been fun although there was definitely a lot less people interested in Dracula than there was for Infinite Jest.

So why has the project come to a grinding halt? Today is the first day with no #infsum reading project scheduled. There has been no announcement of whether the project is going to continue or not. There has been an announcement that we’ll read 2666: A Novel starting in January but there’s been nothing announced to bridge the gap through November and December. If I don’t hear back definitively that the project has a selection, our reading group is going to have to move on on our own. Oh horror of horrors!

Infinite Summer, has the “infinite” come to an end so soon?

The relations of self to other oftentimes reveal the deeply antagonistic relations of class, race and gender. Nowhere are the dichotomous natures of these relationships more apparent than in the novel Dracula. The shifting viewpoints of the narrative, given to the reader as journal entries, letters, and news story snippets, represent these differences in a sensational manner, dramatically calling attention to the erogenous attractions of these relations. The eroticism of these relationships operate strictly in the realm of the unconscious. It is the duty of the reader to tease out their import.

One of these primary distinctions of the novel is situated in the metaphors of geographical penetration. Jonathan Harker, on his premier voyage towards Dracula’s homeland, says that “the impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East” (11). The “Otherness” of the country which he has just entered, taken in combination with Jonathan’s overt naiveté, obscure the actual peril that he is heading towards. Mistaking the local peasantry’s warnings of Dracula as merely awkward, or primal custom, Jonathan overlooks the precariousness of his situation. The further Jonathan proceeds into this “East,” aspects of his “Western” world become less and less pronounced; deterioration of punctuality in the train schedule, the overt religiosity of the peasantry, and the remoteness of the landscape, all accentuate the intense dichotomy being depicted here. Dracula’s homeland is painted in direct opposition to the world of London–a metropolis of science, technology, commerce, and rationality. Transylvania, by contrast, is a broken landscape of streams, mountains, overgrown roads, and predatory beasts; it is ruled by the overpowering forces of nature. Dracula’s intent is to leave his homeland, an area under his complete dominion, for the unknown Western metropolis. For Dracula, it is London which connotes exoticism, something not entirely known.

There exists a definite antagonism between Harker’s London and Dracula’s Transylvania, a set of forces exerted in an attempt to return both of the character’s to their respective homelands. As Jonathan closes in on the Count’s castle, the inhabitants of the countryside become more and more vehement in their protestations at his presence: “I must say that they were not cheering to me, for amongst [the words] were ‘Ordog’–Satan, ‘pokol’–hell, ‘stregoica’–witch, ‘vrolok’ and ‘vlkoslak’–both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire” (16). The natives repeatedly attempt to warn Jonathan of the diabolic task he has accepted, to encourage him to turn around. The local stagecoach driver even takes it upon himself to attempt stealing past Harker’s appointment with Dracula. This is not to say that the natives of Dracula’s countryside are entirely altruistic. Quite to the contrary, even though they pity Jonathan, they seem to realize that he is a necessary sacrifice to the appeasement of the vampire. In their minds it is better that a foreigner be sacrificed than one of their own.

Dracula bears the brunt of a much more volatile racism during his stay in London, because he sets himself in direct opposition to the Londoners themselves. His time in London takes on the rhetoric of a war campaign. Spreading out the boxes of Transylvanian earth to strategically located points in London, serves both to avoid detection and allow for unsuspected attacks. Obviously, the strategy of this campaign, while serving an occult purpose, is deeply rooted in the very human art of warfare. It is perhaps this inconsistency which brings about Dracula’s demise. Dracula’s insistence upon fighting the Londoners utilizing their own tactics, allows the Londoners to second-guess Dracula’s strategy, and ultimately, to defeat him.

It is not only Dracula’s battle strategy that reeks of “Englishness,” but his reliance upon the symbols of Victorianism, as well. Dracula relies on the wealth he has accumulated for centuries, an altogether capitalistic enterprise; he has operated as an imperialist in his family’s wartime campaigns; and despite his occult power, these very Victorian trappings of status are still the means by which he struggles for achievement in the world at large. If Dracula had arrived in London with an entourage of the undead, it would have been difficult indeed for the Londoners to stave him off. The “division of self” within Dracula depicts him as an infinitely pitiable character; his inadequacy to operate completely within the realm of the occult, even after centuries of training, represents a hesitancy to give himself complete over to its power.

The prevalence of Victorianism in the character of Dracula is even more prominent within some of the Londoners in the text. The English characters of the novel, situate themselves within a system which lends societal success to certain codified attributes dealing with lineage, property, wealth, and refinement. Probably the single most clear instance of this complicated system can be found in the courting of Lucy Westenra. Lucy is a rich girl which has just received marriage proposals from three suitors: Jack Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Each of these men are portrayed as dramatically different through the narration of Lucy. Jack Seward, the first to propose, is a twenty-nine year old handsome doctor that is “extremely clever” and has “an immense lunatic asylum all under his own care” (64). Quincey Morris, “number Two,” is “an American from Texas,” a fresh faced world traveler with a delightful ability to speak “American slang” (64-5). Arthur Holmwood, in Lucy’s narration, is the reason which she denies the first two suitors. He merely has to sweep into the room and kiss her to win her hand. What does Arthur have that neither of the other suitors possesses? It later becomes apparent that Arthur is the personification of Victorian bachelorhood. Rich, attractive, refined, and with title, he is the perfect husband for someone as vested in the world of vanity as Lucy; a shortcoming which will leave her particularly susceptible to the wiles of the vampire.

The class status of Mina Murray (later Mina Harker) and Jonathan Harker is quite a bit more complex than that of Lucy’s suitors, because it doesn’t remain fixed throughout the drama. Jonathan begins the story as a clerk and finishes as a solicitor. His hard work and loyalty allow him some degree of social mobility. Somewhat expectedly, Mina’s class, as a woman, is inexorably tied to that of her husband; when he moves up in class, so does she. Fortunately, even though Jonathan begins the novel as socially ambitious, by the end of the novel, he seems content to merely subsist on the relationship between himself and his wife. For the latter part of the novel, Mina’s perilous descent towards the occult, consumes Jonathan’s life; he has no care other than her preservation. The heroism existing in love embeds itself as a major theme in Dracula. Mina and Jonathan are the only two characters in the text which are allowed to experience a somewhat fulfilling close to the adventure. Van Helsing, Seward, and Holmwood are all left glaringly unpartnered, unfulfilled, and frustrated.

Problems of sexuality and gender frequent the text, sprinkling it with dissonant unsuccessful relationships. There is a particular reason why Jonathan and Mina’s relationship is the only one left at the end of the novel despite its periods of great distress. The reason for the success of their pairing exists in the refusal to submit, for any extended period of time, to their Victorian gender roles. It is no great accident that Mina is seduced by the vampire directly following her marriage to Jonathan. Marriage, in the text, gets portrayed as a fixing of gender roles, the ending of liminality. Nowhere are Mina and Jonathan more dangerously and polarizingly feminized or masculinized than the period just following their marriage. Ironically, the occurrence of Mina’s “vampirization” saves their marriage, binding them together in a struggle against a common enemy and forcing them back to into their original personal identities, rather than allowing them to continue under a text of false gender roles. Mina’s masculinized proactivity after her defilement, serves as inspiration for a helpless, and therefore, particularly feminized husband. There is an artful balancing of gender roles, most precarious just following their marriage, that allows Mina and John’s relationship to experience success.

Where Jonathan and Mina succeed, Arthur and Lucy fail miserably. Their agreement to marry based on Victorian pretexts, dooms their relationship to follow increasingly divergent gender roles. Lucy is the only character which cannot, indeed, does not, offer resistance to the vampire in the slightest way. Her lack of fortitude makes her an easy target for seduction by Dracula, a character we have already found to carry more status, riches, and breeding than any other in the novel. Dracula, in some ways then, to a shallow character like Lucy, may actually be a more attractive partner than the wonderfully Victorian Arthur.

But what about Dracula? Dracula’s sexuality is definitely more intensely complicated than any of the other characters. He never allows a male to become a vampire in the text, although Jonathan comes perilously close in his castle. The Count’s anger at the vampiresses for making an attempt to drink Jonathan’s blood exhibits a curious homoerotic tension: “How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! [. . .] Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past” (47). Dracula clearly intimates a desire to consume something of Jonathan; he takes a masculine view of Jonathan as property, placing Jonathan in most assuredly feminized and victimized role. The scene takes on even more curious significance when it is realized that the three vampiresses present were created in the same manner by which he wishes to control Jonathan.

Dracula does intense work to deconstruct gender categories, to separate the psychological from the physical. Every character, broken into the components of their class, race, and gender, portray with differing levels of success, the dangers of failing to recognize social constructions. Unfortunately, even John and Mina’s “successful” relationship is, for the most part, unconscious. The level of abstraction necessary to view one’s self from outside one’s self therefore exists in a realm of impossibility.

Work Cited
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Signet, 1992

What’s up with this post?

I’m currently reading Dracula as part of the Infinite Summer Project, a fabulous online reading group that dives headfirst into notable literary works (it kicked off with Infinite Jest) and supplements the reading experience with online forums and thought-provoking guides who post their thoughts on the main blog. I also host a Seattle-based group (in the REAL WORLD – now with more reality!) that gets together every other Wednesday evening in the Fremont area over beers and books. If you’d like to join us on this or any other future book, leave a comment and I’ll reach out with an invitation to the Google Group where we coordinate things.

The post you just read is a piece I wrote in 1998 upon my first encounter with Dracula. At our reading group last week, I felt it might serve as interesting fodder for conversation so I’ve dusted it off here.

Readers of The Puget News may have already seen the Infinite Summer project currently being promoted by The Morning News. Basically, a large group of people are going to read “Infinite Jest” at the same time, starting June 21st and ending September 22nd. The website will be at the center of the project, hopefully hosting some interactive and dynamic discussion and fact-finding expeditions. This is a huge book but it’s also a very reasonable reading schedule amounting to about 75 pages a week.

I’m planning on taking part in the event and I’d love it of several Seattle-ites would like to come along for the ride with me, and meet up bi-weekly or monthly to discuss it in person over beers. Is anyone out there interested? If so, hit the comments and we’ll get a group going. If this works out, there are several new large works out there that I can think of that would be fun to tackle next. Cheers.